Tamagushi - Linguistic History

Linguistic History

The Japanese word tamagushi is usually written with the kanji tama 玉 "jade; gem; jewel; precious; ball; bead" and kushi 串 "string together; skewer; spit; stick", or sometimes written 玉ぐし with hiragana since the official Tōyō kanji do not include 串.

The earliest recorded transcription of tamagushi is 玉籤, using kuji 籤 "bamboo slip; (divination) lot; written oracle; raffle; lottery" instead of kushi. The (ca. 720 CE) Nihon Shoki "Chronicles of Japan", which repeatedly mentions a 500-branched masakaki 真榊 "true sakaki" tree (tr. Aston 1896:43, 47, 121), is the locus classicus for tamagushi 玉籤.

This mytho-history records a legend that when the sun-goddess Amaterasu got angry with her brother Susano'o and closed the door on the "Rock-cave of Heaven", the gods decorated a giant sakaki tree in order to lure the sun out of the darkness.

Then all the Gods were grieved at this, and forthwith caused Ama no nuka-do no Kami, the ancestor of the Be of mirror-makers, to make a mirror, Futo-dama, the ancestor of the Imibe, to make offerings, and Toyo-tama, the ancestor of the Be of jewel-makers, to make jewels. They also caused Yama-Tuschi to procure eighty precious combs of the five-hundred-branched true sakaki tree, and Nu-dzuchi to procure eighty precious combs of the five-hundred-branched Suzuki grass. (tr. Aston 1896:47)

This "precious combs" translation derives from tama 玉 (tr. "Toyo-tama" and "jewels") and kushi 櫛 "comb", which is a Nihon Shoki graphic variant of kuji 籤 in the goddess named Tamakushi Hime 玉櫛姫 (tr. "jewel-comb" Aston 1896:62).

The (ca. 645-760 CE) Man'yōshū "Myriad Leaves Collection" does not use the word tamagushi but one poem (tr. Pierson 1929-1938:199) describes making it with paper mulberry: "I tie pure white strands of mulberry to the branches of the sacred tree".

Some common tamagushi collocations include:

• tamagushi o sasageru 玉串を捧げる "offer a tamagushi"
• tamagushi hōnō 玉串奉納 "dedicate/offer tamagushi "
• tamagushi-ryō 玉串料 " offerings for tamagushi "　

Tamagushi has an uncommon secondary meaning of "name for the sakaki tree". The (ca. 1439 CE) Shin Kokin Wakashū "New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems" (tr. Carr 1995:8) contains the first occurrence, "Holding the ornamented tamagushi leaves".

The sakaki (Cleyera japonica) is a flowering evergreen tree, which is considered sacred in Japanese mythology. In the present day, Shinto shrines often plant it as a sakaiki 境木 "boundary tree" to demarcate sanctified space. Sakaki is written with the kanji 榊, which graphically combines boku or ki 木 "tree; wood" and shin or kami 神 "spirit; god", compare shinboku 神木 "sacred tree". Carr (1995:11) characterizes 榊 as "a doubly exceptional logograph"; it is an ideograph "character representing an idea" (which is an infrequent type of logograph "character representing a word", see Chinese character classification), and it is a kokuji 国字 "national character; Japanese-made character" (rather than a typical kanji 漢字 "Chinese character" loanword).